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Consumer packaged goods brands invest significantly in advertising, driving brand affinity to boost sales now and in the future. Campaigns are often optimized as they run by monitoring media-in-progress metrics against strategies like targeting specific audiences cohorts. However, because most sales happen in physical stores, accurately linking media sales lift to target audiences while ads are running can be a challenge. 

Many solutions use “total ad sales” for measurement, but this metric doesn’t always correlate to incremental sales, which is Mars Wrigley’s gold standard key performance indicator (KPI) for media effectiveness. 

So how do you know if your current ad spend is paying off while it’s still possible to optimize your in-flight campaigns?

Mars Wrigley is working with EPAM, and using Google Cloud Cortex Framework, to make significant progress tackling this issue with an approach that introduces an agile way to accurately measure in-flight audience effectiveness based on incremental sales.

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The Mars Wrigley approach: Connecting data for actionable audience insights

After exploring many solutions, Mars Wrigley decided to look inward and harness the power of its own data. However, this data was siloed in various media and retailer platforms. 

To solve this, the company adopted Cortex Framework, using its pre-built data connectors and standardized data models to quickly integrate media data from sources like YouTube with sales information from retailers, creating a unified view of ad impact within a central, AI-ready cloud data foundation in BigQuery.

Image 1 - Ref arch

By combining data in BigQuery and using built-in data science tools like BQML, Mars Wrigley can now better understand how specific audience targeting strategies in its media investments are driving incremental sales lift across key customer groups.

For example, by identifying stores with similar sales patterns, the company can create geo-targeted control and expose Designated Market Areas (DMAs) for running audience testing.

By dividing its audiences into distinct segments, each with a control group, Mars Wrigley can experiment and monitor live campaign performance to optimize its investments for maximum sales lift.

Image 2 - uplift graph

Google Cloud Cortex Framework: Accelerating insights and decisions

The accelerated access to a consolidated AI-enabled data core represents a valuable addition to Mars Wrigley’s portfolio of media effectiveness tools. Cortex Framework provides instant insights with its predefined and customizable analytics content as well as seamless integration with major media platforms like Google Ads, YouTube, TikTok, Meta, and more.

Image 3 - Cortex overview

“Before, we were struggling to get an accurate in-flight view of our audiences’ performance. With Google Cloud Cortex Framework, we realized that the answer was within our internal data. We partnered with EPAM Systems to harness the synergy of our internal data sources, enabling us to run timely experimentation based on actual sales lift. This filled an important gap within our portfolio of measurement tools and allowed us to continue making data-driven decisions when it matters.”
– Lía Inoa Pimentel – Sr. Global Manager, Brand Experience & Media Measurement, Mars Wrigley.  

By embracing Cortex Framework, Mars Wrigley is not only gaining a clearer understanding of media impact on sales but also paving the way for a more data-driven and agile approach to marketing in the consumer packaged goods industry.

This approach includes some of the following key benefits:

  • Agile hypothesis testing: Bringing insights in-house significantly accelerates the ability to test hypotheses and adapt strategies quickly.

  • Scalability: The architecture allows for easy expansion to encompass more media investment insights and a broader range of retail customers.

  • Versatility: Beyond audience testing, Mars Wrigley can also leverage Cortex Framework for other use cases, such as media formats, content variations, shopper media, and more. 

To learn more about solutions that can help accelerate your marketing journey in the cloud visit the EPAM and Google Cloud Cortex Framework websites.